


Instar (crossposted to Tumblr)

by Routcliffe



Series: Mulige Verdener [3]
Category: Ylvis
Genre: Fana Skoleteater, Gen, No Plot/Plotless, young ylvis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 03:27:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6736192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Routcliffe/pseuds/Routcliffe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Calle gets ready to spread his wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Instar (crossposted to Tumblr)

“Can I have a drag off that?” Vegard asked.

Calle gave him a withering look. He stubbed out his cigarette in one of the planters next to the classroom window. “No.”

“What? What did I do?”

“If you wanna start smoking, I can’t stop you, but it won’t be with my bloody cigarettes.”

Vegard frowned. “That’s mean.”

Calle stalked past him, giving him a wide berth, and then at the last moment gave Vegard a friendly shove that staggered him. He sat, heavily, on the front stoop of Entrance C–-there was a perfectly good bench not five steps away, but he anticipated a lifetime of sitting quietly and properly, and he was in no mood to get a head start–-and looked up at the younger boy. “You’ve got a golden voice. I’m not gonna be the one who ruins it.”

“Oh,” said Vegard, softly and half to himself, as if he saw the wisdom in this. He sat down, crosslegged, at Calle’s feet. “Are you all right? You're…funny.”

Calle shook his head. “Just thinking.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“The military. University. Everything. Everything’s changing.”

“I thought you were excited,” Vegard said, brow furrowing.

Calle shrugged. His hand wandered towards the pack of cigarettes in his pocket, and he pulled it away. “Sometimes I am. Most of the time I am. But it means leaving all this." He gestured at the off-white walls that rose up around them, the red roofs against a pearly grey Bergen sky. "I…this is my life. I know this. I’m good at it. You know?”

“Yeah,” said Vegard, whose nerdity had looked terminal until they’d gotten him in front of an audience. 

Calle looked up for a few long seconds, eyes pale in the light of the overcast afternoon. Then he looked down. His hand crept to his cigarettes again, and this time he took one out, but he didn’t light it. “Well, it’s over now. I’ve got one summer left. And then my service and school and work. What am I going to be in five years-–an eager young cub reporter, covering flower shows in Lakselv?”

Vegard cocked his head. “Do they even _have_ flowers in Lakselv?”

Calle took the unlit cigarette out of his mouth-–he’d been chomping on it–-and grinned. “‘Course not. That’s what they need a show for.”

Vegard smiled, and scrunched up his nose, before looking down at the ground again. “You get used to it,” he said. “Everything changing. Completely.”

“I guess you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

Vegard nodded. He met Calle’s eyes once, briefly. “I’ll miss you next year, though.”

“You’ll be fine,” Calle scoffed. “You’ll have your brother then. Probably singing right up there next to you, from the way he talks.”

“I have to have my brother. I mean, he’s a pretty good brother, but he’s compulsory. You’re my friend.”

Calle wrapped his arms around one knee and stared at Vegard, touched. The sixteen-year-old wasn’t looking at him, but rather fiddling with the hem of his shirt. “Where are _you_ going to be in five years?” Calle found himself asking.

Vegard shrugged. “Twenty-one? I don’t know. I’d like to join the Luftforsvaret. If they let me." His eyes lit up, and he sat a little straighter, gesturing expansively. "I could fly an F-16. It’s supersonic. And you can accelerate _vertically_.”

“But what if-–”

“There are these things called strakes that give it extra lift-–”

“What if-–”

“–-and directional stability, and let you get away with shorter wings.”

“What if you did something musical?”

Vegard let out a little laugh. “That’s not really a practical plan to make a living, Calle." He grew thoughtful. "Sound engineering, though…”

“You should do something with your voice,” Calle said. “You’ve got a really good voice.”

“Tell you what, then,” Vegard sighed. “You go into showbiz, and then you can tell me how easy it is.”

“Maybe I will.”

“You won’t.”

“I might!”

“And I want kids,” Vegard said. “At least a couple. Maybe not in five years, but…eventually.”

“You’ll need a girl,” Calle said sagely.

“I’m aware of that.”

“Get more girls in showbiz than in sound engineering.”

This had the opposite of the effect he’d been hoping for. There was hurt in Vegard’s eyes. “How come you get to go on and on about showbiz, and the second I open my mouth and talk about something that really exists, everyone loses interest?”

“Because,” Calle said, and gave him a shove.

Vegard appeared to consider this. He put a hand out, and shoved back–-maybe a little too hard, but Calle wasn’t going to fault him. “I have chocolate,” Vegard said, reaching into the top pocket of his spring jacket with the hand that had just been doing the shoving.

"What?“

He fished out a foil-wrapped bar, one of those hundred-gram deals, broken and bent, and handed it over. "In case it helps.”

Calle made a soft, shocked noise, which he covered up by coughing. That made him start coughing for real, and he had to turn away and hawk and spit. “And that,” he wheezed, “is why you shouldn’t-–" He coughed harshly a few more times. "–-smoke.“

"You have tears in your eyes,” Vegard observed, handing him a rumpled kleenex from another pocket.

“From coughing." Calle dabbed at his eyes, and then took the proffered chocolate bar. He set it on the cold cement of the stoop to open it, because it was in pieces and he didn’t want them to go everywhere. They shared it. 

The walls of the school muted the sounds of traffic from the street. Somewhere, on the other side of the flowers probably, some girls were chanting a skipping rhyme, shoes slapping on the concrete. Calle Hellevang-Larsen sat next to the awkward sixteen-year-old kid who had somehow become one of his best friends, and inhaled the spring air, and ate chocolate, and tried to convince himself that the best was yet to come.


End file.
